ISEEBI - Integrated School Energy Education and Building Improvement

This project is designed to be sustainable and expandable.  To accomplish these objectives the Team has designed the project to be modular in its application at each school and event for the Pilot and Phase Two.  The complete project is designed to be implemented in three to four phases.  This proposal is focused on the Pilot Phase but includes information on the other Phases.  Some of all of the modules may be executed as an after school club, thus becoming Informal Science Education, or as a summer camp (see Pre-Pilot for an offer from Bryan ISD).

Pilot Phase Details:

This is presented assuming a summer 2009 start (for planning, training and construction).  See the Appendix for an alternate startup - one involving a Pre-Pilot to be conducted at Bryan ISD in June 2009.

Pilot Modules:

The Kit: A portable interactive construction materials laboratory.  This is designed to be operated by the Energy Engineer during the school visit after the in-situ field trip.  The teacher and Engineer execute the experiments, while the students take turns observing, taking measurements, and doing appropriate analysis on the results. The inventory list is in the Appendix.

Energy Engineer Visit: School energy assessment, in-situ class field trip, assessment presentation.  The budget allows for some follow up with the school to assist the school in preparation for LoanSTAR grant preparation, or hiring an Energy Services firm to do a more in-depth audit.

Class Curriculum: TEKS for middle school (6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade) science includes a strong theme of having students make models to explain scientific concepts and to learn to make valid hypothesis based on observations.  Another overriding theme is to allow students to analyze and evaluate their work, something that does not always get covered in traditional classroom curriculum.  In addition, the 6^th grade TEKS specifically require students to understand renewable and nonrenewable energy production and the transfer of energy in systems such as heating and cooling systems.  This project fulfills all of these areas, by including the construction and execution of age- appropriate experiments. In addition, the project will provide them with a wealth of career opportunities.  This curriculum may be used in a regular classroom setting or used as part of an after school program, thus becoming informal Science Education. Curriculum includes the construction and execution of age-appropriate experiments.  Team collateral material on career opportunities is also provided.

Internet Activities: For the Pilot, the Internet would be used as a resource, leveraging the free interactive games, real world simulations, and curriculum listed in the Appendix.  Later Phases allow the Project to leverage multi-media, custom designed serious games, and on-line collaboration for thousands of students.

Career Fair: The annual Blinn College Tech Prep Career Fair can be enhanced by including the Kit Module as well as the Internet Module.  A supply of Class Curriculum would also be available for the students.  This activity is intended primarily for the schools not participating in the Pilot Phase, it also serves as a sample of the Program.

Field Trips: Subject to school schedules, the students will visit at least one collegiate or vocational venue. The venues for the Pilot are Texas A&M University’s Architecture Ranch, College of Engineering, or the Blinn Vocational Education Program (Electrical and HVAC technical training).  The venues will have their students (and former students) conduct the tours of the venue sites.    These venue hosts will be selected with a preference for matching the demographics and gender of the visiting students.  For many students it may be their first time at a college or vocational school.  Having a guide they can identify with helps make the experience real and achievable.

Teacher Training: For the Pilot, this will be addressed by meeting with the teachers to brief them on the project, allow them to see the Kit, and review curriculum.  If the existing Texas A&M STEM training camps (such as offered by the TAMU College of Engineering/NSF project) wish to use the material we will make it available. ‘

It is likely that additional funding will be needed to “buy into” these existing programs and to cover the cost of ESL staff as the teachers go on their own tours to the Blinn/TAMU venues, possibly accompany Energy Engineers to other schools, and personally work with the Kit.

Pilot Planning and Schedule:

The overall project is planned to start in the summer of 2009 and continue until the end of 2010.  This allows for plenty of time to plan out the visits, gather the materials, and hopefully conduct a Pre-Pilot in advance of the 2009-2010 school years.

Pilot Impact:

The full Pilot (most of the above Modules) is intended to be used by thirty students in College Station and sixty in Bryan.  Additional schools (30-90 students each) can be added inexpensively to the Pilot activities at any time. The Kit and handouts can be provided to 800 potential students during the annual Tech Prep career fair.  The project is likely to receive favorable press, thus extending the impact into the general community.  The proposed Pre-Pilot is address below

Phase Two - Expansion:

Improvement

This phase allows the lessons learned from the Pilot to be incorporated into the Modules and then leveraged to more schools.  To facilitate the scaling up a reliance on the Whyville functionality should allow us to reach more students with more modules for less money.

Increased Depth

Depth of activity will be realized by creating more online content.  This would be comprised of three facets.

1. Whyville’s creation of an Energy Efficiency area much like their earlier work for the Texas Workforce Commission and NASA.
2. An interactive, Serious Game, showing students the relationship between building energy efficiency and emissions reductions.
3. A Virtual Kit of concepts not easily demonstrated in a classroom or school building such as:

Virtualized content is designed to be interactive and illustrative.

Broadened Participation

ESL can provide training to other qualified engineers (perhaps from the School Districts) and assist in the production of their own Kits.

ESL and Blinn can provide training and cadre services for other Tech Prep programs and land grant universities to train them on the program.  This will allow the program to quickly spread across Texas.

Expansion of the number of students is expanded through grass roots funding following a community model.  As each module is inexpensive, the use of local sponsors (such as Banks, Supermarkets, Feed Stores, etc.) makes sense for the long-term sustainment of the project.

Lengthened Participation

There are many distractions between eighth grader and applying for post secondary education. A key element of Phase Two is to keep the students involved for a longer period of time.  This goal would be realized in several ways:

• Encourage the students to participate in the online community - and new activities.
• Have the students continue the field trips to the vocational and collegiate sites.
• Survey the students.

Phase Three - Virtualize:

The Team will create online animated and interactive versions all of the class room activities so students anywhere with Internet access can execute the Kit’s experiments online. This will also allow us to broaden the scope of the Kit to include concepts that aren’t easily brought to a classroom.  When the students have mastered the concepts in the virtual materials lab, they will then “graduate” to the Green Building Game.  The Game will provide more opportunities for both collaboration and competition, using a medium that the students love.  The vision for this activity is that students can compete for high scores, fastest construction, lowest cost of operation, best return on investment, etc…  This will allow for more STEM content to be mapped to the product than documented in the Appendix.  In addition, there is value in having the classrooms collaborate to build a Green Village - in competition with other classrooms!  This activity taps into the competitive American nature, yet provides an example about teamwork.

Technically this Phase three is very low risk.  Whyville has successfully implemented Bioscience and Aerospace Engineering Serious Games on their site in cooperation with the Texas Workforce Commission, NASA, and various foundations.  The PI’s on this project have a track record in entertainment and serious games development, research and education.